


Extended Mind Thesis

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Cybernetics, Disembodied Partner, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Robot/Human Relationships, Sharing Pleasure, Talking Someone Off, Technological Kink, Temporary Bodysharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 06:42:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Eliza explores his body like it's something beautiful, like she wants nothing in the world more than to touch him. Adam's not sure how it came to this. He's glad it did.(Or: an attempt at exploring Eliza's new capabilities turns into something much more intimate.)





	Extended Mind Thesis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> I loved your prompts for these two, and I really hope you enjoy!

It was half-past midnight in Prague. Rain pounded against the windows and the roof of Adam's apartment. He'd left the blinds open to watch the streets outside; rain always turned Prague into a different version of itself, quieter and more at peace. The desk lamp, combined with the streetlamps outside and the distant flashing of a police siren, gave just enough light to see by.

Not that he really needed to see. The company he had over now, no amount of light would really help much. Eliza was visible only when she wanted to be—a face on the TV overhead, video calling him from a wood-paneled office or a sandy beach or any of a hundred other places she'd mocked up—but more and more often now she chose instead to come to him as a voice in his head.

At first he'd thought it might bother him, but he'd actually found he'd preferred it. Their conversations were more private that way, with neither of them having to speak aloud, and there was less risk of being intercepted when she didn't have to hijack the apartment complex's wifi to pull a connection. (More than that, even, there was a certain strange intimacy to it that he liked.)

He and Eliza had been meeting often ever since the attack in London. Over the past few months they'd gone over files he'd pilfered from Palisade bank, missing persons reports he'd brought back from the office, dots he'd managed to connect from what little the Juggernaut Collective saw fit to let him know, even gossip off the streets. 

At first the two of them had kept it focused. They only went over things that might hurt Picus or that connected to the Hyron Project and they kept the conversations businesslike and stilted between them. The two of them had only ever spoken before in life-or-death situations; Adam had been completely unsure how to talk to her about anything less urgent than _Are you behind Megan's kidnapping?_ or _Panchea's about to collapse_ , and, in hindsight, he was pretty sure she'd been just as uncertain.

Over time, though, the topics had broadened. From breaking down Picus's latest lie to throwing a wrench (in both senses of the word; Adam had intervened personally in that one) in the Dvali's latest human-trafficking op, and from there to sitting around and talking about anything that came to mind as they tracked leads for whatever cold case Adam had latched onto last. Sometimes these days they skipped the cases entirely—Eliza would watch Adam's latest clockwork project or tell him about the things she'd seen digging around on the NSN. 

Koller couldn't hear about Adam's work with TF29, Miller couldn't discover his connection to the Collective, and Alex couldn't know just how many doubts he was having over all of it. Having someone in Prague he didn't need to hold his tongue around was more of a relief than he could have expected.

Honestly, it made sense for them to work together. Each of them brought different skills to the table: Eliza had information he could never reach on his own, access to systems and subnets no human being could ever hope to touch, and Adam had... well, a body. Sometimes a case needed someone to go hunt down evidence physically or pull an un-digitized file out of the record offices or loom menacingly at a gangster or two while suggestively unsheathing a nanoblade. They made a good team.

And, beyond that, Adam liked her. More than he ever expected to, more than was probably sane. Eliza might be a megalomaniac's invention created to control the minds of the populace, but she was also one of very few people he trusted. She could be cryptic and confusing, and her thoughts didn't always follow paths he could understand, but she never lied to him. It was more than he could say for either Manderley or Janus. 

A genetic experiment perfect for augmentation and a machine never meant to have free will; they both were built to be tools, and they both had betrayed their creators. _We're prototypes, you and I_ she'd said to him one evening while he was going over a set of stolen reports with her, and he'd understood immediately what she meant. Had agreed completely. 

_We're the same._

Which was why he was sitting on his couch in the dim light, staring at the ceiling and waiting to be taken over.

During one of their quiet nights Eliza had explained to him, haltingly, as if she was afraid he might be horrified, that one of her features these days was _control_. It was something she'd synthesized from the Hyron drones, built as they were to span the missing link between human and computer. It let her interface with turrets, drones, electronic locks, all the way down to smart-tech coffee machines. 

It could also let her interface with the augmented.

Adam had listened to her explanations, her assurances that she wouldn't use it (wouldn't be like Zhao Yun Ru or Hugh Darrow or any of the others who'd used the augmented as tools), and he'd thought, _this isn't right_. 

He knew what it sounded like when someone was afraid of themselves. Hell, he'd lived it, one smashed mirror and shattered coffee cup at a time. It left you filled with self-loathing, convinced at any moment that you might lose yourself and turn into whatever it was that people expected you to be: weapon, monster, murderer. He'd never expected to hear it from Eliza. 

It made a certain amount of sense, he supposed. She was melded with the memories of the Hyron drones. She would know better than anyone how excruciating that loss of control could be, how awful it was to find yourself changed into something you hardly understood. But there was a difference between refusing to use your powers to hurt others and refusing to use your powers at all, and figuring out where the line was had been one of the hardest things Adam ever had to do. He didn't want to leave her to fumble towards towards that understanding on her own.

"We should try it," he'd told her, and when she'd protested he hadn't let it drop. He'd spoken to her about it again and again, never pushing but always leaving the option open. Until finally, one day, she'd agreed.

She wouldn't try to hurt him. If she'd wanted Adam dead, she'd had a thousand opportunities already. He just hoped nothing would go wrong—the first time he tried to use his augmented arms, he'd punched a hole in a hospital door. A skill like this could cause much worse than that.

Adam let out a deep breath, staring at the low-lit window and the rain running down it in streaks. It wouldn't come to that. He had to believe it wouldn't. 

"Okay," he said. Mouth closed, lips barely moving—his augmentations caught the noise where it echoed through his jawbone, amplified it and digitized it and sent it off to its destination.

"Are you ready?" Eliza asked through his InfoLink. 

Adam nodded. Hooked into his system as she was, she ought to be able to feel it. "Let's go."

His arm twitched, fingers snapping tight against his palm before going slack once more, and then augmented muscles flexed without his permission, dragging his hand slow and hesitant towards his face—

Adam slammed his hand back down against the coffee table. It hit with a clattering noise and a thump hard enough to indent wood. Palm down, fingers spread wide to make sure none would move without him seeing, Adam waited for the adrenaline pulsing dizzyingly through his veins to fade.

"I'm sorry," Eliza said into the sudden silence. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

"Not your fault." He'd given her permission. More than that, even—he wanted her to do this. "Just took me by surprise."

"We don't have to continue." Her voice sounded so very close, like she was whispering the words against the shell of his ear. The Infolink always lent conversations a strange intimacy, but normally the person on the other end didn't sound this close or this clear. This time there wasn't really an _other end_ , he supposed. In her own way, she really was standing right next to him.

Adam shook his head. "I don't need to stop. Just give me a second."

Of course he knew the horror stories. Even beyond the looming shadow of the Aug Incident, there were countless reports of Augs being puppeteered by hackers, monitored by employers, tracked by debtors or family or bored strangers looking for a stalker's fix. Two years ago he'd seen it happen firsthand in the Milwaukee plant. But he trusted Eliza. And anyway, this wasn't truly losing control—he'd been able to move his hand when he panicked, override her control with his own. Sharing his body, not giving it away.

One deep breath held to the count of five, another, and he was beginning to feel like himself again. His heart had settled to its normal steady hum. "Okay," he said. "I'm ready. Just... go slow."

Eliza made a little noise of assent. "Let's try something different, then."

"I can handle it," he protested. "And it could be useful to you someday. No reason not to try."

"It's strange for me too, you know. Taste, smell, touch... so many sensations I'd only ever known as data in a file." Her voice hummed in his ear as she added, with a strange intensity, "You're so _organic_."

Adam looked down: metal shoulders turning to metal arms and then metal hands, metal Typhoon ports dotting his chest, metal feet peeking out from beneath his worn-out pants. Beneath his skin—what was left of it— a metal spine and ribs guarded his metal heart so it could pump blood to his metal-studded lungs and brain. "You know, I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before."

"You are," Eliza insisted. "You breathe without conscious thought. You sweat when you're overheated, shiver when you're chilled. I have subroutines programmed; my image blinks and fidgets and licks its lips for the benefit of my audience, but that isn't _me_. Strip away my face, my voice, my vitals, and the essential code remains. But for you it's all tied together."

"And that... bothers you?" The CASIE was pinging him insistently in reaction to her voice, trying to offer him psychological profiling information and readouts on pitch and tone. He sent it back to sleep with a thought. He didn't need it to talk to her.

"It frightens me," Eliza said. "Everything you are could end so easily."

He called the TITAN up for a fraction of a moment, let the pitch-black scales crawl up his arm before fading once more. "I'm tough to kill."

Eliza scoffed. "Do you know how much force a bullet from a lancer rifle would need to shatter your skull on impact?" 

"Are you saying you do?"

"I've calculated it." A momentary pause. In a human it might have been hesitation. "Many times."

"That's, ah." Adam bit his bottom lip, trying to figure out how he could possibly respond to that. 

"Disturbing?" Eliza suggested.

"I wouldn't say that. A little morbid, maybe." Disturbing was watching Talos Rucker die with his augmentations sparking and spasming, or seeing Panchaea's true purpose for the very first time, or waking up in a hospital bed and not knowing who you were. Finding out an AI you knew ran through simulations of your death occasionally didn't even come close.

Eliza laughed quietly. It was a nice sound, and all the nicer for being _hers_ ; he didn't think he'd ever once heard the slick, elegant, focus-tested Eliza on the screen truly laugh. "I don't sleep, and my MIPS rating is over eighteen-point-five million. It's difficult not to explore unpleasant scenarios, sometimes."

"Yeah," Adam said. His reasons for not sleeping weren't anything close to hers, but he understood the feeling of being alone and awake. It always left the world around him feeling unfamiliar, fragile, as if dawn would never come, and made it far too easy to run the highlight reel of his worst fears and regrets again and again through his head.

He didn't have any good advice for her there, though. Not when he'd never managed to figure out the answer himself. Instead, he settled for the next-best thing: a distraction. Adam flipped his hand palm-up once more, like a big black beetle knocked on its shell, and moved his fingers so she'd be sure to feel the feedback. "You want to give it another go?"

" _Very_ much," Eliza murmured, so near to him that for a moment he thought he could feel her breath on the back of his neck.

Adam expected his hand to move once more, and he tried this time to be ready: breathed in deep, forced his arms not to tense. Instead, though, a shiver ran down his spine as a warm hand brushed against his wrist.

No one was there. Nothing touching his body. But he felt, nonetheless, fingers briefly interlacing with his own, stroking his palm and then moving, slowly and steadily, over his forearm, past his elbow, up and up and up. They came to the point where his shirt ought to have stopped her touch and continued on, unimpeded, across the skin beneath the faded gray cotton.

"Oh," Adam said. He couldn't help but stare at the point where his senses told him Eliza's hand should be. 

Eliza asked, a smile in her voice, "Better?"

"Yeah." Adam's body drank in the touch, simulated as it might be. "That's—much better."

"I'm glad." Her hand paused for a moment at the curve of his shoulder, rubbing smooth circles over the metal there, before sliding across to his collarbone, to where the augmentations gave way to organic skin, and—disappeared. 

No, he realized, not disappeared. Faded. He could still feel the faint brush of her hand passing over him from somewhere deep down inside his body; the dermal implants, he could only assume, reacting to the feedback from where they were anchored into his skin. It was a bare phantom of a caress, hardly possible to track, and then her hand brushed the first of his Typhoon ports and the sudden return of the sensation left him biting down on his lip to keep from crying out.

Eliza's hands moved softly from one port to the next like an astronomer mapping out a distant constellation. She left his skin hyper-sensitive wherever she touched him, drove shivers down his spine until he wished that he could turn around on his couch and find her there. He wanted to pull her close, beg her not to stop.

"You don't have to be so quiet, Adam," Eliza said. One of her hands rose up to cup the side of his face, warm skin against the port of his eyeshields and distant sensation all down the rest of his cheek. "I want as much feedback as I can gather." Quietly, she added, "And I want to hear you."

He didn't know what he could possibly say to her that wouldn't leave him embarrassed after. He barely even understood what he was _feeling_.

It wasn't as if he didn't get physical contact. Koller worked on his augs often enough, with how frequently Adam ended up damaging them, and Adam even let TF29's clinicians look over them occasionally. It shouldn't feel so strange to have Eliza's ghostly hands on him now. 

Even as he told himself that, though, he knew that this was different. No one had touched him this way since—god, how long had it been? Not since he'd been augmented, at least. Probably not since Megan. His _augs_ had never been touched like this before: gently, carefully, not with a doctor's clinical approach but with a lover's careful attention.

"Eliza," he said. "Are you..?"

He knew where this could lead—knew, with a sudden terrifyingly clarity, that he wanted it to lead there. But he had no idea if Eliza had the same idea. She had no body, only the painful secondhand memories of one; she might not understand physical contact in the same way a human did. Or, worse, she might only be acting out those physical echoes with him as the subject. Someone Helle had once loved, maybe, or (just thinking about it made his stomach turn) one of the who'd been responsible for her pod-bound and helpless body.

He shuddered. The movement was barely perceptible even to his own senses, not even enough to be called a microexpression. Nothing anyone ought to be able to sense.

Eliza's hand stilled. "Adam? Is something the matter?" She drew away, the sensation against his glasses-port pulling back until it was just as faint as the one that had traced across his organic skin. 

"I'm fine," Adam said. He'd offered his help. He wasn't about to ruin that by pulling back now and making her think there was something wrong with her.

Her voice in his ear was cold and strangely reverberant. "Don't lie to me."

"I'm not..." Adam trailed off with a sigh. If he said he wasn't, that would be a another lie. And it probably wasn't the best idea to try and out-bluff someone sharing your body. "No, you're right. Let me try that again: I'm confused. Do you..?"

Eliza must have read the question from the knot of tension in his throat because she said, without hesitation, "Do I want you?"

Adam made a strangled sort of sound. He hadn't expected her to be quite that direct. "Physically, I mean. I don't know how any of this works for you."

"In the past I monitored transmissions in and out of every single Picus-owned computer, and more than a half a million _not_ belonging to them. It would take a human a literal millenia to consume even one-tenth of the pornography I've processed. I understand physical desire. Not all of it, mind you"—and her tone of voice made Adam suddenly, acutely aware of how much weird shit she must've seen across those millions of computers—"but enough to realize I'm not without interest." Hesitantly, she added, "And I like you very much, Adam. There is no one else I would trust with this."

"Trust, huh," Adam said. "Is that what this is about?" He leaned back, arching into the ghostly touch as if he could bring her closer that way.

"Not trust alone, no. I like to be able to examine things that catch my interest. And you, Adam"—her hands were suddenly _present_ again, one cradling the elliptical frame around his left eye and the other sliding across the exposed augmentation of his neck—"are very interesting to me."

Adam sucked in a breath as he squirmed helplessly against the couch. "Eliza," he said, and then, as her lips brushed against his eyeshield port, " _fuck_."

There was nothing he could do against the feeling; couldn't pull her closer or push her away, couldn't control what path the phantom sensation took across his body. He was powerless to stop her. The thought shouldn't have sent a shivering thrill down his spine, and yet. Seemed like they were both learning a lot tonight.

"Would you take your shirt off for me?" Eliza asked, sounding genuinely curious. 

"Only if you buy me dinner first," he said, but even before the words were out of his mouth he was sitting up to pull his ragged gray tee over his head and toss it on the floor at his feet. 

Eliza said, completely offhand, "I'll inbox you the money," as she ran her hand down to brush once more against the now-exposed Typhoon ports.

"Uh." Adam sucked in a harsh breath at the feeling of manicured fingers circling the rim of where metal meant flesh, and barely managed to get out, "That was a joke," without his voice breaking. He'd never imagined scar tissue could be so sensitive.

"So was mine." Eliza sighed. "Didn't land, did it? It's harder speaking to one person alone. An audience of billions and the only necessary step is to pander to lowest common denominator."

Adam couldn't help but laugh. Sounded about right for Picus's brand of journalism. Lies, damned lies, and reality TV. "Well," he said, "I thought maybe you just wanted me as your kept man."

"What a tempting idea," Eliza said, teasingly, drawing a line of sensation from a Typhoon port down his pecs and ribs and across his stomach until Adam had to press his palm against his mouth to keep from crying out. "It would be a waste, though. Perhaps this: you leave your current bosses, agree to solve crimes for me alone, and I'll keep you in whiskey in and baseball tickets." She laughed into the shell of his ear. "My kept good Samaritan. Everett would be so scandalized."

For a moment it actually sounded tempting. He wasn't sure whether that said more about the bullshit TF29's higher-ups had been pulling lately or the way Eliza's hand felt as it teased a lazy path across his hip. She shouldn't be able to move like this—one hand near his head, the other down low and dipping lower—but it wasn't like she had to follow the laws of physics. Hell, with it all being programmed sensation, she could probably have as many hands on him as she wanted to conjure.

Huh. _Huh_. That thought probably shouldn't appeal as much as it did either.

Eliza interrupted his thoughts with a soft little hum. Her hands had stilled against his skin. He looked down at his stomach, half-expecting to see them manifested there somehow, but his skin and his gleaming-black augs were still the only things visible in the low light.

"Something wrong?" Adam asked. 

"There's something I'd like to try, but"—she cut off with a huff of frustration. "I don't want to alarm you again."

More like before, then, with his hands someone else's. "You can try." It would be easier now that he knew that he could push the control away. "And don't worry about _alarming_ me. If I'm worried, I'll tell you. Okay?" 

The words sounded strange when not in her effortlessly calm tone, like he were a security panel that might go off. She had a way of making even the absurd seem reasonable. Probably part of the dissidence-suppression specs she'd been built to, now that he thought about it.

Sometimes he forgot just how strange his life had gotten these past few years.

She hesitated a moment longer, and then said, "All right."

Adam was prepared to see his hand start moving jerkily again, a phantom limb out of his control, but instead Eliza reached down and wrapped her hands around the backs of Adam's own. The texture was so very real: soft and uncalloused skin, the _clack_ of lacquered nails tapping against metal. She'd put thought into how she ought to feel to others. Her fingers intertwined with his, and then—

His hands were moving, but not like before. Eliza had taken him by the hand and was leading him gently upwards. Guiding, not forcing. 

This he could work with.

Eliza ran his hand upward, letting it skim his chest, following the same pattern she'd traced on her way down. She pressed his own fingers around his nipple, pinching it just hard enough to send a twist of pain and pleasure shivering through his skin even through the faintness of her touch.

"Fuck," Adam hissed. His cock was pressing distractingly against the zipper of his pants. It was embarrassing how hard he was. He hadn't even touched himself yet.

Eliza hummed to herself thoughtfully. "You seem so surprised." 

"I mean, I wasn't exactly expecting any of this tonight."

He knew what she meant, though, as much as he fully intended to dodge the question behind her words. Those first months after his surgery (his _butchering_ , he'd think bitterly, on those nights when he'd been alone in the hospital room and staring up at a off-white ceiling with eyes that weren't his) he'd been afraid to so much as bathe himself. His organics seemed fragile, breakable; hostages to the metal around him and inside of him. He'd been constantly hyper-aware of how easily he could break his own bones or bruise his own skin black with a simple touch.

His augs didn't feel like a prison anymore. They were as much his body as the bits he'd been born with. (In some ways they were more—he definitely felt a closer connection to his Glass Shield than his gallbladder.) But even so he'd never really gone and experimented with how they felt as parts of him. They were a Sarif-brand package deal, designed to make him stronger and faster and stealthier. Useful, yes, and the furthest thing from being designed for pleasure. It had never really occurred to him to _try_.

Though, he thought dryly, if Sarif had always stuck to what was in the specs none of the man's former employees would be where they were today. He should've known they'd be responsive.

Before she could dig further, he added, "Lucky I have you, then. To help."

"True." Eliza laughed. "Then, here. Let me _help_."

She let go of the hand pressed to his chest. It slid a moment down his skin before he remembered to take back control. The other she pulled across his lap, letting it press against his trapped cock. Adam rolled his hips without conscious thought, trying desperately to grind into the sensation.

Eliza said, "I want to see you. Without anything in the way." His own hands plucked at the fabric of his pants. "Would you..?"

With that she pulled away completely, leaving both of his hands free. She wanted him to do this. Without her control guiding him. A thought rose in his mind; Eliza was looking through his eyes now. Waiting, watching. Holding back. He could imagine her standing over his shoulder, her lips close to his ear, her hands clenched at her sides. 

"Yeah," he said, "of course."

Adam unbuckled his belt and fumbled for the button. It deformed a little under the pressure of his eager hands as he popped it open, slid down the zipper, and worked his pants off to join his shirt in a crumpled heap on the floor. 

His already-hard cock jutted against his stomach, pre-cum smeared across the head. He wasn't wearing underwear—he didn't sleep with any, and hadn't really expected it to be an issue—but now he was wishing he'd thought to throw some on tonight. Going from half-clothed to nothing at all left him off-kilter. His face was flushed, his skin felt hot and sensitive.

Eliza made a wordless little noise, and before Adam could so much as brace himself one of her hands was lightly tracing the head of his cock down to the base. The faint sensation of her hand circled the root of his cock loosely, just enough friction to leave him gasping and desperate for more.

"Please," Adam groaned, arching into a touch that he knew wasn't there. "Eliza, that's—"

He couldn't see her, but he could imagine her smiling at him with her body draped against his and her hands sliding down across his stomach. 

"I want to watch you, Adam." Her finger slid over his slit before going faint once more. "Would you show me?"

"It's been a while," he warned her. Her touch already had him feeling on edge. He wouldn't last long.

"I know." He could hear a shakiness to her voice, a desperation that mirrored his own. "Right now, I feel what you feel. It's... overwhelming. I find myself enjoying it."

"Ah." He thought about that a moment: the heat thrumming through his body, the desire, the aching want. All reflected onto her, affecting her the same way her touch affected him. Thought about it, and then wrapped his own hand around his cock and gave himself a long slow stroke.

Eliza made a cut-off little noise in time with his own low groan. The sensation of her hand still was on him; her fingers seemed interlaced with his, following his movements, driving him towards the edge that much faster.

He wanted to go slow, make this last a little longer, but be couldn't help himself. He found himself speeding up in time with Eliza's whispered, "Adam, Adam, Adam," begging her and praising her under his breath as he sloppily pushed himself to the edge with his hand. Their hands.

It had been so long and her voice, her touch, felt so good—

Adam forced back a shaky little sob, hips sliding against the couch as he thrust into the circle of his fingers once more, and then he came with a quiet gasp across his stomach and thighs. 

For a moment after, there was only silence. No quiet breathing, no shifting sheets or murmured laughter; it was different, being with someone who didn't need to breathe or clean herself up afterwards.

Finally, if only to cover the strange nervousness crawling through his stomach (he shouldn't have done this with her, shouldn't have jeopardized the strange friendship between them), he asked, "So. Better or worse than the videos?"

"Some experiences can't be properly understood secondhand, it seems." Her arms went around him, holding him tight, and she said, "Thank you, Adam. I enjoyed that." Her breath against his ear again, the sensation of her teeth nipping gently at his earlobe and her tongue slipping out to soothe away a nonexistent mark. "I wouldn't have, I don't think, if it were anyone other than you."

Adam took a moment to wrap his head around the words, then froze where he was sitting once he understood. _Was that—?_

It might be a confession, or her reiterating her trust in him. It might just mean she found him attractive. With her it was impossible to tell.

"I'm glad," he said. "And—same." Whichever it was, he was sure he felt the same. And that was perhaps the most terrifying thing he'd discovered all year.

Eliza was quiet, thinking. "So," she asked eventually, "what does one... _do_ , now? My previous sources were rather light on the details."

Adam coughed out a laugh. "Well, first I need to get cleaned up"—he gestured down at the cum slowly drying across him in stripes—"and as for after, I think mostly people just watch TV." Or sleep, but that wasn't really in the cards for either of them. "You're welcome to stay, if you want."

"Thank you. I'd like that."

He moved to stand and then paused, remembering. "Do you want to hook back into the smart home system again? Or..?" He didn't say it out loud. They both knew what he was offering.

Her hand on his shoulder, her skin brushing the back of his neck. "I would stay with you a little longer. If that is acceptable to you."

Within him. Connected as deeply as he'd ever been to anyone.

Adam swallowed. "Fine by me," he said, and he didn't add, _I was hoping you would._


End file.
